


the aftermath will ring with songs you've sung

by Emamel



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, Kidnapping, M/M, Mentions of other witchers, POV Outsider, Vague Warlord/royalty au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: Besnik doesn't truly understand the importance of the mission they've been given. Politics isn't something that's ever interested him, and he has only the faintest notion of why it's so important that the witcher girl that follows the Beast like a shadow is brought home with them to Nilfgaard - but then, it isn't his place to understand.-When a group of Nilgaardian soldiers fail to capture the witcher princess, they come to realise that what they've got instead could be a valuable tool for negotiation.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 76
Kudos: 802
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #004





	the aftermath will ring with songs you've sung

**Author's Note:**

> I planned a lot more for this, but the time pressure got to me. Maybe one day.
> 
> Edit: thank you to Jenny, now and always, for letting me message her in an excited haze at fuck o clock in the morning, and thank you to Aleia for the prompt. As always, this goes out to the best barthroom in the world, I love you guys so much

Besnik stares at the men they've tied together like animals to be led to the slaughterhouse, and feels something cold settle in his gut. He's alive through little more than sheer luck and overwhelming numbers, he knows. That, and at least a little bit of the element of surprise.

Two of their three mages are dead, and the last one looks as though she isn't far behind, although she's already drained enough life from the dying men she was supposed to protect to begin healing her wounds. Perhaps she'll even survive until morning.

An uncomfortably large part of Besnik hopes that she doesn't.

Despite that, he knows that the men still standing owe her their lives. It's nigh impossible to truly sneak up on a single witcher - to have successfully ambushed even a small group of them travelling off the road was nothing short of fucking miraculous.

It doesn't make the ache in his gut lessen when he looks over the witchers they managed to subdue.

Several of them are still unconscious, knocked out by one of the dead mage's spells, but their bindings are still tight enough to turn the surrounding flesh white. They'll have to be loosened at some point, Besnik thinks, or they'll risk losing limbs - and though the Beast of the North is renowned as a fair ruler, he is unlikely to be forgiving of any harm to his men. 

Particularly when they need to strike a bargain with him.

Besnik doesn't truly understand the importance of the mission they've been given. Politics isn't something that's ever interested him, and he has only the faintest notion of why it's so important that the witcher girl that follows the Beast like a shadow is brought home with them to Nilfgaard - but then, it isn't his place to understand. He is a foot soldier in the service of the Eternal Flame now; more honourable than a sellsword, but only barely.

The man closest to Besnik begins to stir. His hair is matted almost black with tacky blood, and he opens his eyes to the barest slits before slamming them shut again with a pained hiss. Despite himself, Besnik flinches back a little, and then glances around to see if anyone had noticed, feeling unaccountably foolish. The man's tied up - whatever he may be capable of, Besnik doubts he can escape enchanted rope wrapped around him so tight it'd be a wonder if he could feel his fingers.

That isn't enough to calm Besnik's racing heart, and he can only be glad that none of his fellows seemed to notice. They're too busy piling bodies onto the hastily built pyre that isn't really burning hot enough yet to turn the flesh to ash.

The man groans again, and starts to push himself upright. He's holding himself carefully, Besnik realises, as though he's trying to protect his ribs - but then, he'd been wearing almost no armour at all when they attacked, and he'd hardly had time to pull any on. His thin shirt wouldn't have offered any protection - gods, his feet are still bare, Besnik realises. Perhaps he'd been bathing at the nearby river when he'd heard the sounds of fighting and come racing back.

Or perhaps, he thinks, feeling the beginnings of sticky dread unfurl as he stares at the bared hollow of the man's throat, he wore no armour because he somehow, impossibly, wasn't one of the witchers at all.

Everyone Besnik has ever worked with for longer than a few days says that he doesn't have the stomach for mercenary work, and perhaps they're right. He takes no joy in it, no pride in his work. But he's always had a sort of animal instinct, an almost uncanny sense for danger and he has never been shy about it. It makes him something of a good luck talisman, until people realise too late that it rarely extends beyond himself.

Every single one of those instincts scream at him that they're already dead, and the fact that they're still breathing is purely because their bodies haven't yet heard the news. He stares at this man, with his jaw set tight against the pain, tendons standing out on a neck unadorned by a witcher's medallion, and he knows that he's a dead man walking.

He should tell the others, he thinks distantly, although he doesn't know what good it will do.

In the end, he holds his tongue - almost swallows it when the man's eyes flash in the firelight. He's smaller than the witchers, if only barely, and leaner too; but Besnik knows better than to assume he's harmless. And more than that, he knows that the men are trusted companions of the Beast of the North. For a human to be travelling amongst them, and beside the witcher girl no less, he must be something truly special.

Besnik isn't sure how many humans live in the witcher's stronghold, but he knows that most of them would not be trusted with the Beast's heir apparent. The man was a good choice though. Besnik recognises him now as the one the girl had clung desperately to before he'd flung her into the waiting arms of the sorceress that had managed to fend off the first wave of magic and open a portal almost immediately after.

_ Take Ciri and go!  _ The man had sounded more furious than afraid, though he had been armed with little more than a knife. He'd pushed his swords at the girl -  _ Ciri _ \- and she'd clutched at them seemingly out of instinct. She and the sorceress had disappeared through the portal alongside a couple of witchers, and it had held until poor Malek tried to follow them through.

It had closed before he had made it halfway - Besnik doesn't know if he had a family, but he is glad that they won't have to try to return what was left of him to anyone.

He swallows heavily, and stares into the fire. They won't be able to stay here long; can't risk the sorceress portalling an army back with her, though she had looked exhausted at holding the portal and defending against the blasts their own mages sent her way.

"You have to know that this won't end well for you, one way or the other," says a witcher sat a few feet away from the man Besnik has been carefully not looking at. His skin is perhaps the darkest of any man Besnik has ever seen; despite the twist of his mouth, his face is open, almost friendly. 

He doesn't answer, but the man snorts.

"Coën," he says, but it's less of a warning, and more of a fond admonition. Coën rolls his eyes, and doesn't appear to be in the slightest concerned.

"He isn't going to be in a very forgiving mood when he hears about this, you know that," Coën says, seemingly forgetting about Besnik for a moment - but he can see how the witcher's head tilts as he moves, tracking the sound. It would be the height of idiocy to forget just what witchers are capable of, even bound as they are. They had torn through the men at Besnik's side like a fire through a summer forest.

Whether the Beast feels particularly forgiving doesn't matter. What matters is that he doesn't risk unnecessary conflict. If nothing else, he will come to them to hear their ultimatum, and that will be all the opportunity they need. Besnik is only relieved that they'd planned for an eventuality like this, though none of them had expected it to be needed. When they'd received word that a small entourage of the Beast's men had travelled far enough south to almost skirt the border, it had sounded like too good an opportunity to be true.

Emperor Emhyr certainly hadn't thought so - he had barely waited for confirmation of the intelligence before gathering his men.

Besnik is under no illusions that he was selected for his skills, or for the Emperor's trust in him. He's expendable - if the witchers had been too numerous to overcome, or if the witcher girl hadn't been with them after all, it would be better not to have wasted his best men on a suicide mission.

The pyre has started to blaze hotter now, helped along by the fact that some of the men have started to paw through the witcher's packs and throw any belongings not worth taking onto the fire along with the corpses. 

In a bid to distract himself from just how human the witcher looks, Besnik follows suit. The heat is growing uncomfortable, and he can feel sweat sticking his shirt to his back. He swipes his sleeve across his forehead and begins to rifle through the first bag he lays his hands on.

There's not much in it - witchers must travel even lighter than he'd expected. Some weapons, some bottles that must contain the famed witcher potions that he gingerly sets aside without examining too closely. A change of clothes, some dried food and a waterskin. A few of the horses had snapped their ties and bolted into the forest - perhaps the saddlebags would have contained something more interesting, but for now there's little to keep Besnik's attention away from the low, disgruntled muttering of the witchers.

None of them sound afraid, which puts him ill at ease. Maybe it's true, what people say, and they have no human emotions - but he'd heard the laughter, quick and uproarious, as they'd advanced on the camp. 

A fresh wave of sweat breaks out across his forehead, and he holds up a pair of boots critically. He forces himself to focus on the miniscule stitching, on the fine supple leather patterned with odd bumps almost like scales and the barely-noticeable wear on the soles. An old pair, but well-cared for, and of a quality that he's only ever dreamed of. They look too large for him even if he stuffed the ends with wool, but a pair of boots like this would fetch more than he makes in a year under the Emperor. He turns them over and over in his hands, and eventually glances up, back towards the barefoot human.

Human or no, he's their captive; a hostage, and not one that is likely to survive the experience. It would be a waste for him to have them. They're far too good for one of the Beast's men 

And yet, with an anxious glance at the others - still preoccupied for the most part with hooting gleefully as the books and clothes the witchers had been carrying went up in smoke - he sidles over, boots clenched in one fist.

"These'll fit well enough," he mutters, dropping them before the man. There's just about enough give in the ropes for him to be able to tug them on, and he does so immediately, though he gazes curiously at Besnik all the while. To his relief, he doesn't try to say thanks.

Behind Besnik, the jeering swells until it's almost deafening - the man's eyes catch on something over his shoulder, and his face contorts in such a sudden fury that Besnik finds himself stumbling a few instinctive steps back.

"Hey!" The man snarls, throwing himself forward against the bindings and choking as they tighten and drag him back. "Put that down, put it the fuck  _ down,  _ that's a gift!"

The gift in question, when Besnik turns to look, is an instrument case - it's ornate like little he has ever seen, embossed with such delicate detailing that even from where he sits, he can't make it all out. It gleams in the low light, and it is, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on. His fingers itch with the desire to touch it, even for a moment. He knows nothing about music, nothing about the lute, but he thinks he could be content if he could only hold the thing.

Tomasz, their leader - at least until the mage recovers herself - holds it inches from the flames, and something in Besnik shudders at the sight. That close to the fire, it's already likely damaged, and his chest aches at the thought. No wonder the man sounded so desperate. Besnik almost calls out himself, though he manages to bite his tongue at the last second.

The man's breathing is harsh and furious, even as one of the witchers manages to shift in his binding enough to dig an elbow into his ribs. It must have been gentler than it looked, because he barely sounds winded when he again snaps at Tomasz to drop it.

He sounds like a man who is accustomed to being listened to, and the unease in Besnik's stomach threatens to spill up his throat like acid.

Tomasz only scoffs.

"And who the fuck are you to try and order us around, dog?" He spits, and Besnik thinks he may be the only one who notices how the witchers all stiffen. Fury flits across the face of the one who'd elbowed the man; the long scar bisecting his cheek twists his face into something from a nightmare.

The man seems unbothered by the insult, but his fierce gaze doesn't once leave the lute case.

I  _ said,  _ put it the  _ fuck  _ down," he says again, lips curling back from his teeth. In the fire, the blood still staining his mouth catches red and glistens eerily.

Tomasz lifts a brow, though this time his laughter sounds just the slightest bit forced.

"That isn't how this is going to work," he snaps, the words coming fast and thin the way they do when he's been wrongfooted and is determined not to show it. "Here you are  _ nothing,  _ d'you understand? Doesn't matter what kind of big fucking upstart you are in the Beast's court, you don't mean  _ shit  _ to us or the Emperor except as a trade for the princess."

Besnik wants to hiss at him to shut his damn fool mouth. Doomed though the men are, it's still stupid beyond all reason to tell them anything. More than that, though, he's curious. Does Tomasz know what's so important about the witcher girl? He supposes she is a princess, of sorts, though it isn't how he would have described her. He doesn't know any of the intricacies of the Beast's line of succession, but everyone knows that she can't be his true child. Witchers are sterile, after all.

The man tilts his head, and bares his teeth.

"The princess?" He asks, and beside him, the witchers begin to shift restlessly. "The same princess claimed by Destiny according to the Law of Surprise? The same princess that has lived among the northern witchers for the past eight years, with not a word from your Emperor? The same princess that your Emperor would have brought aboard the ship he'd already planned to sink, with only the word of a turncoat mage to protect her? The princess that should have been raised as your Emperor's daughter, and was instead abandoned by him before she was old enough to understand what that meant? That princess?"

Besnik's heart must still be beating, for he hasn't keeled over dead, but it feels frozen in his chest. The sorceress' face is a rictus mask of rage, and Tomasz is not much better. Besnik feels little more than horror.

Gods, what has he got himself tangled in?

"You must think yourself awfully close to the Beast, to be so used to speaking impetuously," the sorceress - Besnik thinks she may be called Isobel, though he doesn't want to know anything at all about her - snarls. 

The scarred witcher beside the man throws his head back in sudden, inexplicable mirth. Around him, the other witchers stifle their smiles, though the flinty look hasn't left the man's eyes.

"Awfully close!" The scarred witcher howls. He tips back with laughter, and almost falls. "Hear that? She thinks you're  _ awfully close!" _

"Lambert," the man hisses, but it's too late. Clarity comes with an uncomfortably sudden trickle of ice down his spine.

The human isn't the first consort the Beast is rumoured to have taken, but Besnik has heard that this one is something else. That he accompanies the witcher to peace talks, to grand feasts and inspections of his lands alike. He has heard that the man has the Beast's ear as well as his bed, that he's managed to wrap him around his little finger and his bedsheets.

If they hadn't been dead before, Besnik thinks despairingly, they are now.

Isobel eyes him with a great deal more interest than she had before. Tomasz, still shaking with both fear and anger - and knowing him, indignation at being ignored in favour of a sorceress - lifts the lute case above his head, ready to bring it down into the flames.

"Wait!" 

Besnik hears that it's his voice a few seconds before he realises that he must have opened his mouth to speak. Tomasz turns incredulous eyes on him, and he finds himself stammering slightly under the scrutiny.

"I - I have a cousin, a musician, she'd love a piece like that! It would, would be a waste, wouldn't it, when one of our own could put it to use?"

His cousin isn't Nilfgaardian - was somewhere in Novigrad in fact, last he heard - but Tomasz doesn't know that, nor does he care to know.

He eyes Besnik suspiciously for a moment, before snorting and throwing the case at him. Besnik barely manages to fumble a catch before it hits his face.

Up close, it's even more beautiful than he first thought, though he doesn't allow himself a chance to admire it.

He waits until the attention of his fellows has slipped away from him again before turning to the man who is now watching him with a wary curiosity.

"I'll make sure it's cared for," he says at last, clutching it tight to his chest. He doesn't know why. He doesn't need to explain himself. But despite himself, there's something warm in the pit of his stomach, something to match the warmth in the man's eyes as the lines of his face soften with gratitude and he tips his head.

Besnik turns away and wishes, not for the first time, that he had followed his cousin's example and fled to Oxenfurt when he had the chance. Priscilla never gets herself caught up in messes like this.

  
  
  
  


The keep that Isobel had chosen as their base is long abandoned, and just barely repaired with magic in the areas commonly used. It means that although Besnik isn't likely to die when a wall crumbles because he leans on it too hard, the whole place is cold, and dank, and he keeps tripping on flagstones that have been pushed up by the plants trying valiantly to grow there.

Not that it matters. After the Beast has come, and the exchange has been made, the whole place will be reduced to rubble. Unfortunately, that does nothing to warm Besnik now.

There is a part of him - the part that resents the man he has had to become, the part that still wants nothing more than to sit beside a fire and listen to stories long into the night - that hates the way they have brought the witchers here to their deaths. It isn't the same as facing a man with sword in hand, where there's always the chance that you might be the one to fall instead. It's nothing short of a slaughter.

There are explosives lining every passage of the keep, and more destructive spells than Besnik even knew existed woven into the stones besides. It should make him uncomfortable, he thinks as he runs a hand along the weather-beaten stones in the courtyard, but he felt uneasy here long before he learnt of just how deep the traps run.

As soon as the princess has been handed over in exchange for the Beast's men, the sorceress will conjure a portal for them and set the charges. There's no way the witchers will be able to escape the blast, even if they manage to clear the keep itself. A crude plan, but an effective one.

If only it didn't leave Besnik feeling so sick to his stomach.

It isn't just the guilt, though there is plenty of that. Guilt at the thought of Coën, of Lambert, of Gweld and the others that greet him with something approximating smiles when he takes them their meals. At the thought of the man that Lambert laughing calls  _ Delicate Flower,  _ who thanked him with earnest eyes for saving the lute case from the flames. Besnik doesn't really understand - it's wonderful, certainly, and very valuable, but there isn't even an instrument inside. It isn't worth the almost reverent way the man - Besnik doesn't want to call him Flower, even in his head, but he also doesn't want to ask his name - had stared at it.

Now, though, churning with the guilt is fear, fear so deep and desperate that he feels almost calm with it. 

The northern witchers are on the move.

Reports have been filtering down to them for days, though before, Besnik had managed to dismiss them. The Beast isn't a violent ruler - it's well known that his court will seek diplomacy far beyond the point any reasonable king would have declared war. Which made it easy to wave away the stories being spread around the keep.

Stories of an army of witchers swarming south. Stories of lookouts and spies suddenly turning tail or risk having their organs spread in a trail for the crows. Stories of posts burnt to the ground, of every man slaughtered where they stood at their post. Besnik had snorted, ahd rolled his eyes at the spreading of such superstitions. Witchers were terrifying in battle, yes, and it wasn’t a secret that the Beast of the North had more than one mage at his court, but even so, he knew that the man wouldn’t risk the bloodshed of his own men over this. Especially not travelling with the princess.

But they had barely started hearing the rumours at the turn of the week - and now, the northern witchers are almost upon them, and Besnik is one of the men tasked with fetching the hostages from the dungeons. It should be impossible, he thinks, even with all of the mages the Brotherhood has ever moulded, to move such a force of men so far and so fast. Especially with all of the stops they must’ve made along the way, with all of the butchery. The only comfort he can offer himself is that they must by none be exhausted - they’ll be unlikely to notice the trap snapping shut around them, and if they do, they’ll be in no fit state to fight back. Even their mages must be pushed past the point of breaking by now, unable to do anything against Isobel’s spells layered into the keep. 

He rubs his hands nervously against his breeches, and starts the descent into the dungeons.

Even before they had been rebuilt and reinforced, they had been disgusting. Now, they are not only strong enough to hold the witchers, but also vile enough that Isobel thinks them suitable. Besnik flinches back from the slick wall as he hurries down the stairs and into the relatively wide corridor that houses the cells. He’s spent more time down here than in the rest of the keep combined, he thinks, though at first it was merely because he had been given the worst of the guard shifts. Then Jonah had stopped turning up to relieve him, apparently realising that Besnik wouldn’t dare draw attention to himself by complaining to Tomasz about it. And then he had lingered even after that, talking to Dillon and pretending not to notice how the witchers occasionally joined the conversation.

The Beast’s consort is the butt of the jokes more often than not, but he has a quick tongue that could give as well as it got, and the smile that curls his mouth holds a fierce joy that has convinced Besnik that the teasing is not unwelcome. He has never known a courtier to take such pleasure in even good-spirited ribbing; but then, he’s beginning to realise that he understands even less of the workings of the Beast’s court than he had first thought.

Dillon and Jonah catch up to him with a few more men behind them, their faces hidden in the shadows cast by the low torchlight. It mustn’t be a problem for the witchers, he realises, as he watches their shining eyes track his movement from their cells. Besnik turns to make sure that there are plenty of men behind him, though he doesn’t expect an attack after all this time - he and Coën have even formed an uneasy camaraderie in the face of Lambert’s rough sense of humour.

As he opens the door to the cell, Isobel’s bindings tighten around them until even the most stoic among them grunt painfully and are jerked to their feet. Besnik only just manages to hide his flinch, though from the way several gleaming pairs of eyes snap to him, he doesn’t do a good enough job to fool a witcher. He steps back and hunches his shoulders - lets Jonah bark orders at them and watches from under his lashes as the witchers begin to file out.

The last man to leave the cells is Flower, and he pauses beside Besnik for the space of a few breaths. He doesn’t say anything, but the curve of his mouth could almost be called comforting. 

Besnik shoves his unease down, and ignores how every instinct is telling him that this is his last chance to run. 

In what was once the grand hall, Tomasz and Isobel stand shoulder to shoulder, and Besnik is hard pressed to tell who looks more displeased about it. He shuffles in behind Dillon, and stands close enough to Lambert and Flower that he can hear the irritated rumbling of the witcher and the occasional soothing hum from the man.

Besnik’s knees are shaking.

They aren’t made to wait long. The doors - solid wood, and so heavy that there are the remains of winches on the wall that would have been used to open them even before the hinges seized with rust - are flung open with a noise like a shriek, and the Beast’s entourage strides through.

Besnik doesn’t know what he had expected, but he knows that nothing he could have conjured would have lived up to this.

There are more witchers storming through the doors than he thought still existed on all the continent, and if he focuses, he thinks he can see mages walking among them, unarmoured and with power sparking at their fingertips. There may even be a couple that he recognises from that night, some scars that look familiar, he knows he has seen the head of riotous curls before in the light of the moon and a dying fire, as she dragged the princess Ciri though a hasty portal.

He swallows. There’s no longer any time to run, though he doesn’t know where he would go if there were. The exits are all blocked, either by witchers or by their own men, and still more sweep through the doors, filling every available space.

This isn’t going to be a negotiation, he thinks with dawning horror. This is going to be a massacre.

But still, there is no sign of the Beast of the North - Tomasz shifts in place, until a twitch of Isobel’s fingers leaves him frozen where he stands.

As one, the witchers turn, spines snapping impossibly straighter in their armour, one hand going to their medallions. Besnik’s breath shudders. He knows, with the deep, animal fear of prey, that the man who walks through the door next will bring his death.

It is - he is -

He isn’t the seven-foot tall monster that he had heard tales of - his fangs don’t drip blood, nor do his eyes glow. Perhaps he has the cunning eyes of a man accustomed to navigating the tangled politics of the northern courts, but his expression is too cold to be sure. His eyes may as well be chips of ice in his surprisingly boyish face.

As he passes, each witcher bows their head in something like reverence - Besnik is shocked to realise that the man is, if not the shortest among them, then certainly the narrowest. His shoes click against the stone as he strides forward until he is almost close enough to reach out and touch Isobel, his chin tilted back with haughty indifference.

Besnik doesn’t know why he is so surprised that the man’s face is unmarked by scars beneath his short hair, but he is.

Despite that, there is no mistaking the mantle draped across his shoulders - pure white and so thick that it can’t possibly have come from any natural creature - nor the crown resting on his brow. His disdainful eyes flick past Isobel and Tomasz as though they don’t exist to him, and pass quickly over the assembled witchers behind them until his gaze snags on Flower.

It is as though all of the tension rushes from him, and with it, the northern witchers drag in a breath as one.

The Beast’s eyes are a brilliant, vibrant blue, and they race from the crown of Flower’s silvery head to the bottom of his fine boots before he finally deigns to turn and acknowledge what should have been the greatest threat in the room.

With this many mages in his army, Besnik knows that all of the traps in the world wouldn’t have been enough to bring them to their knees. And more than that, as he looks behind them and sees no sign of the princess, he knows that they never had any intention of negotiating. Tears start to burn at the corners of his eyes, and he squeezes them shut, feeling abruptly foolish. He’s always known that his life wouldn’t be a long one. No use getting upset that it’s ending now.

“Where is she?” Isobel demands, impatient and reckless, and about to get herself killed. The Beast meets her eyes without flinching, cornflower blue against vibrant red, the medallion at his throat glinting. 

“We came to negotiate, as requested,” the Beast says, in a voice that echoes around the room until Besnik’s ears feel like they’re ringing. 

“Yes, for the princess,” Tomasz says, and if he weren’t still caught in the web of Isobel’s spell, Besnik is sure he would be on his toes, searching among the crowded witchers for any sign of ashy hair.

“No,” the Beast says, in a voice that brooks no argument. Even Isobel seems stunned into silence. “You requested a negotiation to free our men, and we agreed. You requested that we look to the mercy of the Beast of the North, that we remember the loyalty of our men, that we meet you here, in this  _ hovel _ to hand over our Lion Cub in exchange for our deaths - well. I suppose that part was implied.”

His smile is nothing at all like a smile - sharp, and full of teeth.

“But you see, if it was our mercy you were after, you went about this all wrong,” he spits - he lifts one hand to gently rest against hihs medallion. “But, never let it be said I am not fair. That I am not  _ just _ . That I am not  _ merciful. _ You asked us to consider the mercy of the Beast of the North, of the witcher Geralt, and so we shall.”

His gaze slips again, to the familiar spot beside Besnik, who feels rooted to the spot with nothing less than animal terror.

“Jaskier,” sighs Flower, with that same fond exasperation that Besnik has grown so familiar with. 

“Well, my love?” The Beast - no, not the Beast. Jaskier - Jaskier, the man who wears the Beast’s mantle and his crown, who has blue eyes but wears the medallion of a Wolf - Jaskier asks. “Should we show them mercy?”

Flower - Geralt - the Beast of the North - opens his mouth to reply, and Besnik closes his eyes.

He should’ve listened to his instincts.


End file.
